"Securing The Block" For Old Times Sake, May 2012

Photo, blog post by John Hoff

To me, it doesn't SEEM that long ago, but it's been FOUR YEARS since I bought a dumpy little house smack dab in the middle of a four square block area the City of Minneapolis and neighborhood based organizations had dubbed "The EcoVillage." The area was, statistically, the roughest four blocks in Minneapolis. I was surrounded by crackheads, prostitutes, wrecked and devastated houses, and a small number of decent people who were doing their best to stay inside behind locked doors while drug dealers literally fought over who "owned" which street corner and the madness of "The Apartment Complex of Anarchy" spilled into the streets.

Not everybody was staying indoors...

It's the Demolition Shuffle!

By the time the Hawkman got to the scene, the backhoe of doom was already gone.

Slummy the Squirrel loses ANOTHER place to hide his nuts for the winter.
Guest post and photos by the Hawthorne Hawkman.


Whereas you look left, and they fall right, it's the demolition shuffle. While I was getting video footage of Uncle Lennie's coming down...

3035 6th St N in the EcoVillage was demolished. This was the house of mold, and it will soon be home to a LEED Gold certified new home. I look forward to the day when we're building (and preserving!) instead of demolishing, and calling THAT revitalization. But for now, there are good demolitions, and two of them happened AT THE SAME TIME. We just can't keep up with the revitalization in NoMi.

3035 6th Street N. Appears Close To Demolition...

Photo By John Hoff

Hawthorne's Housing Director Jeff Skrenes reports that a "mini-backhoe and a pile of dirt" are in front of 3035 6th St. N., which is "a house with mold problems so severe they can be smelled from the yard, and also the future site of the first new construction in the Eco Village."

In an email, Jeff was asking if...

...somebody could take a picture when the demolition starts. Currently, problem properties are going down so fast in Hawthorne and Jordan that this blog can barely keep up.

Here, insert customary JNS verbiage about revitalization busting out all over, unstoppable progress, crime is way down, new buyers looking for great deals on homes in a revitalized NoMi, etc. etc.